News Update

PROGRESS REPORT: April

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The first week of April was occupied with my brother and I moving our mother from Worthing to a small house in Builth Wells - on her 88th birthday! She loves the small town and although there's some work to do on the house, it is warm and comfortable and can wait a while. It's very good having Mum close by - she loves the company and I love her soups!

Over Easter the wall behind the trough garden and the walls around the steps into the hexagon were rendered. Then I spent some days putting the coping bricks on the trough wall.

The weekend of the 24th/25th emerged as the one for erecting the scaffolding. To be ready for the task the area around the hexagon had to cleared. Since dismantling the scaffolding during Summer 2003, I had used some of it to make structures to hold various materials. These all had to be taken down and the materials moved as we needed all the scaffolding.

On Sunday the 18th, Neal and Stewart barrowed a huge pile of soil into the trough. Over the next couple of days Luke dropped by after work and helped clear a heap of burnt timber flung from the upstairs window after the fire. Sawing up the shelves and cupboards painstakingly made from recycled timber years ago wasn't as horrific an experience as it would have been merely a month ago. We also dismantled a woodshed made from scaffolding and a Land Rover roof.

Ben, a young man extremely big and strong, began working on a regular basis. He is my new back and sometimes my brains too. A real find. More soil went into the trough including an old garden destined to be the site of an oil tank. More scaffolding retaining tens of tons of stone excavated from the bank where the trough now stands was retrieved. We spread the stone raising the ground level at the front of the shed.

Another woodshed was dismantled to make access to the scaffold store easier. . .

Four friends dropped by to help put it up - It was a wonderfully hot weekend and went very well.

Meanwhile Carol's partner, Nigel, the man who is in charge of replacing the roof, came down to put in a temporary staircase to the top floor. While the sun shone he worked for two days in a filthy black hole. A real hero.

We wasted no time using Nigel's stairs to put a tower upstairs and begin to take down the roof. Ben managed to wreck the wrecking bar! He persuaded me not to recycle the timber but burn the lot. It was the right decision.

To get away from the dust and grime we put the final surface to the new parking area beside the trough garden.

Next week the Douglas Fir for the roof arrives and the windows are finished. . .